Line #28 Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude


1	[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/100_years_of_solitude.png]]
2
3	->''"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."''
4	-->-- [[SignatureLine Opening line]]
5
6	''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' is a 1967 novel that won Creator/GabrielGarciaMarquez the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's become a staple of Spanish-speaking high school curricula everywhere, mostly for being [[MindScrew awesomely deep and so goddamn hard to understand]]. Arguably one of the most important pieces of literature written in the 20th century, or to put in context, almost as important as ''Literature/DonQuixote'' to Spanish speaking literature. Famous, among other things, for using every conceivable trope one could ever hope to fit in 28.8 oz of paper.
7
8	The book follows the story of the Buendía family and the town they create, Macondo, from its foundation to its end. Of course, it is told in a [[AnachronicOrder non-linear fashion]] with [[GenerationXerox every generation having the same few names]], as well as the same basic attributes (except for a pair of twins whose names are thought to have been accidentally switched at some point). Alongside the story of the Buendía family, there are an abundance of vignettes recounting both the everyday and the supernatural occurrences that shape the lives of the inhabitants of Macondo. The themes range widely, incorporating legendary figures (such as the WanderingJew), historical events ([[{{Pirate}} Sir Francis Drake’s bombing of Rioacha]], the Massacre of the Banana growers), and short stories about the love of two minor characters who never get to [[TwoLinesNoWaiting interfere with the main action]].
9
10	Netflix has announced that it will be adapting the story into a television series.
11
12	----
13	!! ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' contains examples of:
14
15	* AchievementsInIgnorance: During the eating challenge between Aureliano Segundo and Camila "The Elephant" Sagastume, the latter reveals that her technique is based on "absolute tranquility of spirit"--she has no issues of conscience weighing on her heart and can thus eat without stopping. Towards the end of their challenge, Camila realizes that Aureliano has inadvertently stumbled on the same strategy, but in an unexpected way--he has such LackOfEmpathy that his conscience is clear because he doesn't think of anyone or anything but himself and his own pleasures.
16	* ActorRoleConfusion: The opening of Macondo's first cinema causes a few problems because of this: when the actor that played a dying character in one movie appears as an Arab in the next one, the locals riot.
17	* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Rebeca with José Arcadio. Úrsula Amaranta with Arcadio Babilonia.
18	* AlmightyMom: When Arcadio takes over Macondo and is killing people in violent reprisals, his grandmother/adopted mother Úrsula stands up to him, calling him out and whipping him while chasing him away. From then on she has authority in Macondo. She also later gathers the mothers of revolutionaries together to try to stop her son Colonel Aureliano Buendía from having General Moncada executed.
19	--> '''Úrsula''': You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. But don't forget that as long as God gives us life we will still be mothers and no matter how revolutionary you may be, we have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect.
20	* AnyoneCanDie: [[spoiler: And in fact, almost everyone does.]]
21	* ApronMatron: Úrsula is a strong-willed matriarch who keeps the house in order and is capable of standing up to even the most willful of her family.
22	* ArbitrarySkepticism: Despite the [[MagicRealism constant fanatical happenings around Macondo]], everyone looks at José Arcadio Buendía as a crank for believing he can make the Gypsies' inventions work and for his fantastical plans, and they turn out to be right about this skepticism.
23	* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler:Remedios the Beauty, literally.]]
24	** [[spoiler:It's implied that Melquíades does this at one point.]]
25	* AssassinOutclassin: Colonel Aureliano Buendía manages to avoid many assassination attempts due to a combination of luck and his premonitions.
26	* AttackOfTheTownFestival: Guerrillas open fire on the citizens of Macondo as they're holding a carnival.
27	* AuthorAvatar: A character only mentioned in passing, simply named Gabriel García Márquez.
28	%% * AuthorVocabularyCalendar: "Prodigious"
29	* AwfulWeddedLife: Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda del Carpio's marriage. At one point, there's a page-long sentence of Fernanda ranting about her awful life, which provokes Aureliano Segundo to trash all of her fancy household equipment.
30	* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:Subverted. The last generation's baby that could have brought back the family's glory is eaten by ants.]]
31	* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler:Melquíades. Twice.]]
32	* BananaRepublic: For a while, Macondo is this.
33	* BastardBastard: Arcadio is born of an affair between José Arcadio and Pilar Ternera, and grows up to be a murderous and tyrannical ruler of Macondo during the war.
34	* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Amaranta desperately hopes for something to delay Rebeca's wedding with Pietro Crespi so she won't feel she has to kill Rebeca. She gets her wish when Remedios dies, and she's horrified by it.
35	* BedTrick: Arcadio wants to sleep with Pilar Ternera, saying he knows she sleeps with everyone so she has no right to refuse, but Pilar is secretly Arcadio's mother and doesn't want to admit it, so she spends half of her money to have Santa Sofía de la Piedad visit him in her stead.
36	* BelligerentSexualTension: Mauricio is the JerkWithAHeartOfGold, Meme is the Type B {{Tsundere}}. [[TearJerker It ends in tragedy]].
37	* BestialityIsDepraved:
38	** The Golden Child brothel has a dog who does this to be fed.
39	** José Arcadio Segundo takes up having sex with donkeys at one point.
40	* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler:José Arcadio saves Colonel Aureliano Buendía from the firing squad.]]
41	* BiggerIsBetterInBed: Several people say this about José Arcadio.
42	-->A gypsy woman with splendid flesh came in a short time after accompanied by a man who was not of the caravan but who was not from the village either, and they began to undress in front of the bed. Without meaning to, the woman looked at José Arcadio and examined his [[UnusualEuphemism magnificent animal in repose]] with a kind of pathetic fervor.\
43	"My boy," she exclaimed, "may God preserve you just as you are."
44	* BigBeautifulWoman: Camila "The Elephant" Sagastume. While quite large, she is described as beautiful and kind, and when he first sees her, Aureliano Segundo wishes he could have a "tourney" with her in bed.
45	* BigEater:
46	** Aureliano Segundo becomes this, to incredible degrees. In an eating contest, he eats (among many other things) a whole pig, and suffers a stroke as a result. He once has an eating contest against Camila "The Elephant" Sagastume, who can eat just as much as him.
47	** Subverted with Rebeca: The Buendías only break her habit of eating dirt and whitewash with a ''lot'' of effort, and she'll snap right back whenever overwhelmed or stressed.
48	* BigFancyHouse: The Buendía household gets remodeled and renovated quite a few times as the family becomes more successful. [[spoiler:It doesn't last.]]
49	* BigFun: Aureliano Segundo is fat for most of his life and is a fun person to be around as he eats in feasts, plays the accordion and gives constant raffles.
50	* BigScrewedUpFamily: The book
51	* BlackSheep: Arcadio is this to the Buendía Family. His resentment grew during his childhood due to being neglected by all of them except for Melquíades, to the point that when he's told he doesn't deserve his last name, he proudly agrees, saying "I'm not a Buendía". This goes both ways, as his authoritarian ruling of Macondo during the war lead to Úrsula openly disowning him.
52	* BoisterousBruiser: José Arcadio, post-WalkingTheEarth. Also, Aureliano Segundo.
53	* BoomTown: Macondo. It goes to the DyingTown phase but never becomes quite a [[GhostTown ghost]] one.
54	* BrainlessBeauty: Remedios the Beauty is renowned for her incredible beauty and is also likely mentally disabled, though some are convinced she is secretly wiser than everyone.
55	* BreadEggsMilkSquick: When Rebeca first appears, it's mentioned her baggage consists of "a small trunk, a little rocking chair with small hand-painted flowers, and a canvas sack which kept making a cloc-cloc-cloc sound, where she carried her parents' bones."
56	* BrickJoke:
57	** [[spoiler:The last of the 17 sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendia being killed.]]
58	** [[spoiler:The last member of the Buendía family is born with a pig's tail, just as Úrsula had feared, many years ago, and it spells doom for the entire town they founded.]]
59	* BrokenBird:
60	** Amaranta (starting, but not ending, with her rivalry with Rebeca over Pietro Crespi).
61	** Rebeca herself becomes this after [[spoiler:the death of José Arcadio,]] shutting herself out from the world.
62	** Meme after [[spoiler:losing Mauricio Babilonia.]]
63	* BrotherSisterIncest: José Arcadio marries Rebeca, who's been raised by his parents during his long absence in Macondo. It was for this reason that their decision to marry was met with some resistance, until a priest confirmed that they're NotBloodSiblings.
64	* BuildingOfAdventure: After the rains, when all the action is centered in or around the now-decrepit Buendía mansion.
65	* BungledSuicide: [[spoiler:Colonel Aureliano Buendía]] has his personal physician paint a target on his chest right over his heart, intending to shoot himself after the war ends. After he survives, it turns out the doctor was smart enough to paint the target in a spot where the bullet would miss every single vital organ.
66	* BuriedAlive: A man condemned to death by fire squad survives and it's implied that he'll be alive when they bury him. This traumatizes José Arcadio Segundo to the point where he leaves instrustions for his own head to be cut off before his burial, to make sure he is really dead.
67	* BuriedInAPileOfCorpses: After leading a strike which ends in the strikers being massacred, José Arcadio Segundo wakes up on a train filled with corpses and has to walk back to Macondo.
68	* BuriedTreasure: The gold inside the Don José statue is buried by Úrsula somewhere around the Buendía house. Colonel Aureliano and later Aureliano Segundo try to find it with no success, with Úrsula refusing to tell them anything. [[spoiler:The gold is eventually found by Aureliano Segundo's son José Arcadio and one of his young companions.]]
69	* TheBusCameBack: José Arcadio (son of Úrsula and the original José Arcadio Blendía) leaves to join the gypsies after finding out Pilar Ternera is pregnant with his child while he is only 14 years old. He later returns, having seen much of the world and being able to regale people with many stories.
70	* CallBack: Jose Arcadio Buendía discovers a Spanish galleon during one of his expeditions. It shows up every now and then as the generations pass.
71	* CensoredChildDeath: The [[spoiler: last Aureliano's fate.]] However, ''[[NightmareFuel we do]]'' [[NightmareFuel (along with his father) get to witness]] [[{{Squick}} the corpse.]]
72	* ChickMagnet:
73	** Pietro Crespi, due to his musical talents, angelical appearance and sensibility.
74	** José Arcadio, due to the opposite reasons: his great physical strength, brutish ways and [[BiggerIsBetterInBed mythical penis size]].
75	* CityOfAdventure: Macondo, your quiet smallish town somewhere in LatinLand... AKA Colombian Caribbean.
76	* ColonelBadass: Colonel Aureliano Buendía, of course. Arcadio ''tries'' to be this, but it doesn't work.
77	* ControlFreak: Fernanda, especially after Úrsula [[spoiler:loses her eyesight]]. Her need for control ends up resulting in [[spoiler:Mauricio Babilonia getting shot and paralyzed, and Meme [[TheVoiceless going silent]] and being shunted off to a convent for the rest of her life.]]
78	* ConspicuousConsumption: After becoming successful, Aureliano Segundo parties ''hard''.
79	* CreepyChild:
80	** Colonel Aureliano Buendía was one. He cried in his mom's womb, was born with his eyes open, predicted things as a kid and as a youngster...
81	** One of the 17 Aurelianos was also like this. He creeped out Úrsula and Amaranta when he came to meet them, walked around the house as if he had been born there, and asked them for a toy that he had never ever seen (and they didn't even remember) and somehow knew was there.
82	* CreepyTwins: José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo used to cultivate this image and pull {{Twin Switch}}es as kids. Once, when their mom served them some lemonade, one of the kids tasted it and ''the other'' boy, who had not drank still, said it was unsweetened. Subverted, as they grow up to be PolarOppositeTwins (with José Arcadio Segundo as a taciturn ShellShockedVeteran and Arcadio Segundo as a BoisterousBruiser) [[spoiler: until their deaths]].
83	* CreepyUncle: Or Creepy Aunt, in this case; Amaranta is attracted to her nephew, Aureliano José, and they become physically intimate. However, they never go beyond touching, since she decides to stop the affair after Úrsula catches them almost kissing.
84	* CurbStompCushion: Arcadio's army is outnumbered (being formed by only fifty men) and ill-prepared to meet the conservative forces when they attack Macondo. None of his men survive, but they manage to kill three hundred soldiers before dying.
85	* DeadGuyJunior: Over and over and over...
86	* DeathOfAThousandCuts: The [[spoiler:last Buendía dies of this from an army of ants.]]
87	* DeathByChildbirth: In a variation, little Remedios dies after a terrible miscarriage. [[spoiler:Played straight with Amaranta Úrsula.]]
88	* DeathIsCheap: Melquíades. He returns to life because the land of the dead was too lonely for him.
89	* DeathSeeker: Played with in the case of [[spoiler:Colonel Aureliano. He isn't actively seeking death, just waiting for the right time to die.]]
90	* {{Determinator}}: José Arcadio Buendía. His sheer inability to give up on one mad dream after another results in the foundation of Macondo and drives the plot for the first several chapters of the book.
91	%% * TheDitz: Mauricio Babilonia. Pietro Crespi, to a certain extent.
92	* DoggedNiceGuy: Gerineldo Márquez, to Amaranta.
93	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Amaranta Úrsula succumbs to DeathByChildbirth. Hers and Aureliano Babilonia's child is left alone by his father in his grief and is ultimately eaten by ants. Aureliano, who has crossed the DespairEventHorizon already, sees his kid dead and then realizes this is the last clue to decipher Melquíades's scripts. As he's reading them and uncovering all the secrets of Macondo and the Buendías (his true bond with Amaranta Úrsula included), Macondo is destroyed by a tornado and everyone dies.]]
94	* DisproportionateRetribution: Prudencio Aguilar insults José Arcadio Buendía over his lack of a sex life with Úrsula. José Arcadio Buendía [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice kills him with a spear]] ten minutes later.
95	* TheDreaded: Colonel Aureliano Buendía becomes this to the entire conservative regime.
96	* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Pietro Crespi]]. Subverted with Colonel Aureliano.
97	* DyingTown: After Macondo goes through several natural disasters, everybody is taken over by apathy and even the birds leave.
98	* DyingMomentOfAwesome: When the conservative forces attack Macondo, Arcadio allows Colonel Gregorio Stevenson to help defending the town, giving him a rifle with twenty cartridges. Stevenson defends the barracks [[OneManArmy by himself]] so efficiently, that the attackers believe it to be too well-defended and resort to blowing the place up with cannon fire. And he did it all in women's clothes!
99	* EasyAmnesia: The entire town, briefly, and more permanently Rebeca, as a symptom of a plague. [[spoiler:Everyone gets cured after Melquíades' reappearance.]]
100	* EatDirtCheap: Rebeca has a habit of eating dirt and wall plaster when she is first adopted by the Buendías. She is trained out of it picks up this habit again during times of stress.
101	* EmpathicEnvironment: Arguably, Macondo reflects what the characters are going through: being mostly abandoned after the Buendía family had lost their glory, being full of life at the start of the novel, while the family had just settled in, etc. The Buendía house also reflects this strongly: going from the biggest house at the beginning to a decaying mess at the end.
102	* ExactWords: When Aureliano Segundo searches for gold hidden by Úrsula, he asks Pilar Ternera (a future teller) for help. She can only say that the treasure does indeed exist and is buried somewhere within a 122 meter radius of Úrsula's bed, which happens to be the exact distance to the end of the backyard. This leads Aureliano Segundo to dig up the entire backyard, to no result. [[spoiler: After Úrsula dies, the treasure is found buried right under her bed.]]
103	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The book spans over one hundred years, with one of the main themes being solitude.
104	* ExplosiveBreeder: All of Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes' animals [[spoiler:(only ''before'' the five-year-long rain, that is).]]
105	* FaceDeathWithDignity:
106	** Gregorio Stevenson invokes this to Arcadio when Macondo is raided by the conservative army while he's imprisioned.
107	--> "Don't let me undergo the indignity of dying in the stocks in these women's clothes," he said to him. "If I have to die, let me die fighting."''
108	** Arcadio faces his death remarkably calmly, with the anxiety he's suffered his whole life fading away. However his last-second regret about not suggesting Remedios as a name for his daughter leads to him feeling fear again at the last moment.
109	** Colonel Aureliano faces his death by firing squad with dignity, though he ends up being saved in the end.
110	* FacingTheBulletsOneLiner: [[spoiler:Arcadio]]'s last words before being shot by a firing squad:
111	--> "Bastards!" he shouted. "Long live the Liberal party!"
112	* FamilyExtermination: 16 of colonel Aureliano Buendía's sons are killed at the same time when he threatens to arm them against the government. The only ones not killed here are Aureliano José, who was killed earlier; and Aureliano Amador, who manages to escape until he is killed much later.
113	* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo: Arcadio never knows his true parentage, and is raised believing his grandparents José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula are his parents.
114	* FormerlyFat / FormerlyFit: After becoming wildly rich and successful, Aureliano Segundo balloons up from a svelte athlete to a fat glutton. When the rains begin, he finds himself with nothing to do but putter around the house repairing things and doing chores, and the exercise (plus the floods causing a forced diet) helps him slim down again.
115	* FriendlyEnemy: Downplayed, Don Apolinar Moscote and Jose Raquel Moncada are not exactly enemies with Colonel Aureliano Buendía, with whom they are good friends, but they are on opposite political sides during the war.
116	* FreudianExcuse: Arcadio being neglected and forgotten within the family leads to him going to extreme, violent lengths when he has a chance to have power over Macondo.
117	* FullCircleRevolution: Emissaries suggest to Colonel Aureliano Buendía that he makes major concessions to the Conservatives like giving back land titles, ending the fight against the church and giving up on fighting for equal rights for illegitimate children, in order to make peace and gain popular support. Colonel Gerineldo Márquez objects because this would mean they would be just like the conservatives and would be fighting for nothing, but Aureliano accepts the terms, having become cynical and convinced they are just fighting for power and pride anyway.
118	* FullNameBasis: José Arcadio Buendía, the family patriarch, and Colonel Aureliano Buendía once he achieves that rank. It helps to differentiate them from their successors.
119	* GagPenis: The first José Arcadio was described as "very gifted" in his manhood, and the discovery of that resulted in him being drafted away from home by a impressed lover. Also, Aureliano Babilonia from the penultimate generation.
120	* GeneralFailure: Colonel Aureliano Buendía, although not technically a general. Starts a lot of wars (a total of ''thirty-two''), and loses all of them.
121	* GenerationalSaga: Follows the Buendía family through many generations over more than a century.
122	* GenerationXerox:
123	** The Aurelianos and José Arcadios. Lampshaded by Úrsula more than once.
124	** Subverted with the Segundos. They each have some traits of their predecessors, but some are switched around, maybe due to the TwinSwitch they perpetuated as children.
125	** Ultimately comes to full circle in the end, because like the other Amaranta before her, Amaranta Úrsula [[spoiler:has an affair with her own nephew. The difference with her is that she [[SurpriseIncest didn't know her familial connection to her lover]] and that said affair went on long enough for her to bear a child from it.]]
126	* GenkiGirl: Amaranta Úrsula, and to a lesser extent, her older sister Meme before her.
127	* TheGloriousWarOfSisterlyRivalry: Amaranta and Rebeca.
128	%%* GoodScarsEvilScars: Amaranta's burnt hand.
129	* GratuitousForeignLanguage: Latin during a conversation with the priest, and the bookshop owner sometimes says phrases in Catalan.
130	* HappilyAdopted: Aureliano Babilonia ''thinks'' he's this. This is what leads him to [[spoiler:have relations with Amaranta Úrsula, setting off the events that culminate in [[RocksFallEveryoneDies the end of Macondo and the Buendía family.]]]]
131	* HarmlessLadyDisguise: Colonel Gregorio Stevenson disguises himself as an old woman to safely get to Macondo to warn them of their incoming defeat and advise them to surrender, without getting caught and killed along the way.
132	* HauntingTheGuilty: José Arcadio Buendía is haunted by the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, who he killed. They eventually form an odd friendship, because Prudencio is lonely in death and only has his enemy to talk to.
133	* HeWhoFightsMonsters: [[spoiler:Subverted by Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Through the war's course he becomes increasingly cold and cruel, and one of his subordinates and personal friend even lampshades it, but he ends up an apathetic {{Hikikomori}} making gold fish until his death.]]
134	* {{Hikikomori}}: Various characters shut themselves in rooms, usually the workshop or Melquíades' room, sometimes only temporarily. The most "famous" are José Arcadio Segundo and [[spoiler:the Colonel]].
135	* HistoricalInJoke:
136	** Colonel Aureliano Buendía's involvement in war between the Liberals and Conservatives.
137	** The [[spoiler:massacre of some two or three thousand people by the banana company]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_massacre actually happened — the book just fictionalizes it]].
138	* HookerWithAHeartOfGold: Pilar Ternera, Petra Cotes and Nigromanta.
139	* HopeSpot: [[spoiler:The last Buendía seems to have all the good qualities of both José Arcadios and Aurelianos, and is thus expected to achieve balance of the SiblingYinYang and overcome the tragedy that seems to chase the family, he's eaten by ants the next day shortly before his father dies in the tornado that destroys their house and the whole town.]]
140	* IHaveBoobsYouMustObey: The mermaids: "The great swamp in the west mingled with a boundless extension of water where there were soft-skinned cetaceans that had the head and torso of a woman, causing the ruination of sailors with the charm of their extraordinary breasts."
141	* IWishedYouWereDead: Amaranta. ''Twice''.
142	* ImpoverishedPatrician: Fernanda del Carpio.
143	* ImpromptuTracheotomy: José Arcadio Buendía kickstarts the plot via giving one of these to his rival Prudencio Aguilar in Riohacha. Since Prudencio's ghost starts hanging around their home shortly afterwards, he and Úrsula (along with a group of other young people from the town) decide to leave so he can rest in peace.
144	* InTheBlood: Several traits are repeated through the generations, some could be considered to be in the ''name'', such as the reflexivenesss and stoicism of the Aurelianos and the mad enterprising nature of the José Arcadios (switched with the twins). The whole family shares being prone to obsession and incest, as well as sabotaging their own work so as to have more work to do later, and, of course, every single family member is doomed to have a lonely life with a tragic ending.
145	* InnocentFanserviceGirl: Remedios the Beauty, who loves going around naked. She even lampshades this by saying it's the best way to go around.
146	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Mauricio Babilonia is a fan of BrutalHonesty, but can be somewhat sweeter when with Meme. It's mentioned that Meme starts falling more genuinely for him ones she deduces that his brusqueness towards her is, to a degree, [[PetTheDog his way to show tenderness]].
147	* KarmaHoudini:
148	** The four punks who kill [[spoiler:José Arcadio,]] steal all the gold coins, and are never heard from again.
149	** [[spoiler: The banana company]] never faces any consequences for [[spoiler:the massacre of thousands of people.]]
150	* KidsAreCruel: The twins swap identities and drive everyone around them mad, Úrsula is convinced she is dead by her infant descendants playing a prank [[spoiler: which causes her to die for real]], and [[spoiler: one Buendía is murdered by a group of adolescent punks he befriended.]]
151	* KissingCousins: [[ThePatriarch José Arcadio Buendía]] and [[ApronMatron Úrsula Iguarán]], who are also the first Buendías, were cousins. Also doubling as ChildhoodFriendRomance. The same was true of two of their older relatives. However, Úrsula spends most of her life desperately trying to prevent incest from continuing on to other generations and destroying the family (by originating the birth of a pig-tailed child). [[spoiler: In the end, it happens anyway.]]
152	** José Arcadio, and Rebeca could also count as this, coupled with NotBloodSiblings; the latter is mentioned to be a daughter of some distant maternal relatives of the former.
153	** Amaranta provokes this in her nephew and great-great-nephew, but never follows through with it.
154	** In the last few generations, Amaranta Úrsula starts an affair with her nephew [[spoiler: Aureliano Babilonia, bringing Úrsula's fear to fruition]].
155	*** BookEnds: [[spoiler: In the beginning, a relative of José Arcadio and Úrsula (the son of the couple mentioned above) had been born with a pig's tail as a result of incest, which had led Úrsula to refuse to consummate her marriage in the first place. In the ending, Aureliano Babilonia (son of Meme Buendía with Mauricio Babilonia and hidden by Fernanda Del Carpio, Meme's mother, due to being an out-of-wedlock baby) falls in love with Amaranta, (daughter of Fernanda with her husband, Aureliano Segundo, making her Aureliano's aunt) and has a baby with her, who is born with a pig's tail.]]
156	* KnightTemplarParent: Fernanda, so damn much. She [[spoiler: disapproves of Meme's relationship with Mauricio Babilonia, due to him being lower class, finds out they've been sleeping together and Meme is pregnant and then plans to pay someone to shoot him (which paralyzed him from the waist down) and frame him as a dangerous chicken robber, send Meme to a nunnery and hide their baby from the world, due to him being born out of wedlock.]]
157	* LonelyAtTheTop: Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Granted, he isn't exactly social ''before'' he achieves his high rank.
158	* LonersAreFreaks: Most characters are loners in their own way, and freaky in their own way. The ones that are more obviously loners, such as the {{Hikikomori}}s, are also more obviously freaky (José Arcadio Buendía, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, ''et al.'')
159	* MadDreamer: José Arcadio Buendía, who devolves into a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} in his old age.
160	* MakingLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces: Amaranta Úrsula likes doing this with her husband, Gastón[[spoiler:, and later, with Aureliano Babilonia.]]
161	* MayDecemberRomance: Amaranta Úrsula and her first husband, Gastón.
162	* MagicRealism: This ''is'' a Gabriel García Márquez novel, after all. It is ''the'' book that helped bring the genre to wider attention.
163	* MarkedToDie: [[spoiler:All of the sons Colonel Aureliano Buendía has during the war are eventually given cross-shaped ash marks on their foreheads. It makes them easy assassination targets.]]
164	* MassiveNumberedSiblings: Aureliano José has ''seventeen'' half-brothers from his father Colonel Aureliano Buendía's numerous affairs during his civil war campaigns.
165	* MeaningfulEcho: A much older Úrsula echoes her son Aureliano's line while he was awaiting the firing squad, responding to then statement that time passes with "That's how it goes, but not so much."
166	* MethuselahSyndrome: Úrsula lives at least 120 years or so, and Pilar Ternera lives to 145.
167	* MindScrew: The novel has a reputation for being particularly time-disorienting. In one page, events happen at such rate that they could have easily taken a month or a year to take place, and the book is littered with instances where the amount of events either condensate or expand, with no particular time frame to place them even with linearity. The only semblance of a time frame comes from the generations of the Buendía family, which of course, ''have years in between''. When one is done reading it, it does feel like a century in events.
168	* MiniatureSeniorCitizens: The matriarch of the family, Úrsula Iguarán, lives until she is over 120 years old… and by that time has shrunk to the size of a fetus. She becomes so small that her descendants Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula use her as their doll.
169	* MistakenForGay: José Arcadio reassures Úrsula that Pietro Crespi isn't a threat to her daughters because he's a "fairy", though he does turn out to be interested at least in Amaranta.
170	* TheMistress: Petra Cotes is Aureliano Segundo's lover even after he marries Fernanda del Carpio, and many times she is referred to as "the concubine."
171	* MultigenerationalHousehold: The Buendí household at one point contains Úrsula, her daughter Amaranta, her granddaughter-in-law Santa Sofía de la Piedad, her children Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo (and the former's wife Fernanda), and Aureliano Segundo's children Meme and José Arcadio.
172	* MundaneMadeAwesome: Coupled with UnusuallyUninterestingSight. Nobody in the town is especially surprised when Remedios the Beauty ascends into heaven, because, of course she does. But when the railway comes to Macondo they think it's a huge iron monster.
173	* MurderTheHypotenuse: Amaranta is willing to kill Rebeca to stop her from getting married to Pietro Crespi, who she loves herself. She doesn't go through with it because the wedding is delayed enough by the death of Remedios that Rebeca ends up falling in love with José Arcadio instead.
174	* NotBloodSiblings:
175	** José Arcadio, who marries his adopted sister Rebeca shortly after meeting her for the first time. Though this decision was met with some revulsion from Úrsula. But Rebeca is mentioned as being a relative of Úrsula, which would make her a [[KissingCousins cousin]] to her husband.
176	** [[spoiler:Aureliano Babilonia]] thinks he's safe from this because he ''thinks'' he was adopted. Unfortunately, [[OneTrueLove Amaranta Úrsula]] [[SurpriseIncest is actually his aunt.]]
177	* NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization: [[spoiler:Near the end, Aureliano Babilonia is unable to cope with his attraction to Amaranta Úrsula, who is his aunt and who he believes to be his sister, and rapes her while her husband is in the other room. She tries to fight him off at first, but ends up enjoying it so much that her feelings of love are transferred from her husband over to him.]]
178	* ObliviousAdoption: {{Inverted}} with Aureliano Babilonia, since he ''thinks'' he's adopted and not actually related to the Buendías, therefore making it okay to [[VictoriousChildhoodFriend have an affair with Amaranta Úrsula.]] But boy, is he [[SurpriseIncest wrong]].
179	* ObliviouslyBeautiful: Remedios the Beauty is so beautiful that [[SoBeautifulItsACurse men get themselves killed over their lust for her]]. Due to her [[WomanChild childlike mentality]], she has no idea of the effect she has on men, and [[HypocriticalHumor qualifies them as simple and dumb]].
180	* OhAndXDies: The first line of the book reveals that Colonel Aureliano Buendía will die by firing squad by describing his thoughts as he faces that firing squad, and Arcadio is revealed to die in the same way by similarly describing his thoughts. [[spoiler: While Arcadio actually does die by firing squad, Aureliano is saved at the last minute.]] It also gets mentioned early on that the 17 Aurelianos (sons of the colonel) will be massacred.
181	* OhCrap: Just before [[spoiler:the firing squad kills him,]] Arcadio realizes he forgot to say that his child should be named Remedios if it was a girl.
182	* OldRetainer: Santa Sofía de la Piedad, who, despite actually being the mother of Remedios the Beauty, Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo, is treated as another servant. She seems to be content that way.
183	* OneSteveLimit:
184	** Averted. Male names are passed down through family lines in every conceivable combination. If you don't have a superhuman short-term memory, you ''will'' need the family tree kindly provided by the publishers at the start of the book. [[spoiler:It's part of a larger theme of history's cyclical nature.]]
185	** Notably, during the war Colonel Aureliano Buendía sires 17 sons… who are all named Aureliano. People resort to calling them by both their names and maternal surnames: Aureliano Triste, Aureliano Amador, ''et alii''. The Colonel also had a child before, with Pilar Ternera. His name? Aureliano José.
186	* OnlySaneMan: For most of the book, Úrsula is the most (and sometimes only) sane voice in the house. Lampshaded now and then. Santa Sofía de la Piedad is sane enough to avoid most of the conflict in the plot.
187	* PairTheSpares: Subverted.[[spoiler: After José Arcadio and Rebeca hook up, Pietro Crespi proposes to Amaranta, but she rejects him harshly.]]
188	* ParentalIncest:
189	** Arcadio tries to seduce his own mother, Pilar Ternera [[SurpriseIncest (though he's unaware of his true parentage),]] but she bribes another girl to sleep with him in her stead.
190	* ThePenance: Amaranta badly burns her own hands as self-punishment for driving Pietro Crespi to suicide with her rejection of him.
191	* PimpingTheOffspring: The future Colonel Aureliano encounters Eréndira, a girl who accidentally burned down her house leading to her grandmother selling her into prostitution to repay the resulting debts. She later reappeared as the main character of Marquez' SpinOff story, ''The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother''.
192	* PlanetOfSteves: We have at least five Arcadios (José Arcadio Buendía, José Arcadio (son of the first one), Arcadio, José Arcadio Segundo (son of Arcadio) and [[spoiler: José Arcadio Babilonia, son of Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta]]) and at least twenty-one Aurelianos (Colonel Aureliano Buendía, Aureliano José (son of the Colonel with Pilar Ternera), the seventeen Aurelianos, Aureliano Segundo and [[spoiler: Aureliano Babilonia]]).
193	* PracticallyDifferentGenerations: José Arcadio is between sixteen-eighteen when Amaranta is born. He gets Pilar pregnant briefly after she was born, thus Arcadio and Amaranta were raised together.
194	** Meme and Amaranta Úrsula have an age difference of more or less twenty years, as [[spoiler: Meme had already completed her studies when she had a son and he's roughly the same age (maybe older by two or three years) as Amaranta Úrsula, [[HistoryRepeats the two being raised together]]]].
195	* PrecisionFStrike: Several. And they are ''glorious''.
196	-->'''José Arcadio Buendía:''' ''[showing his son a yellowish mass of gold in a crucible]'' What does it look like to you?
197	-->'''José Arcadio:''' Dog shit.
198	* PrincessInRags: Fernanda. Lampshaded when she goes on a [[CharacterFilibuster two-sentence rant that lasts more than two pages]] about how she was raised to be a queen, only to be treated like a servant by her in-laws, who have no respect for her or her golden chamberpot.
199	* ProperLady: Little Remedios, and later Santa Sofía de la Piedad. Subverted with Úrsula, who is very devoted to her family, but also extremely stubborn and more than capable of standing up to her husband and children.
200	* QuestionableConsent: Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula's first sexual encounter has this, since the former came onto the latter forcefully and it was initially met with resistance. Amaranta ''does'' eventually give in, but the fact it has a NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization just blurs things. There's also the fact that Amaranta still loved her husband when Aureliano pretty much sexually assaulted her.
201	* QuirkyTown: Even without the Buendía family's interference, Macondo is pretty odd: it once rained for years, yellow flowers fell out of the sky after José Arcadio Buendía dies, the local brothel has a dog, etc.
202	** There are indications that the quirkiness isn't limited to Macondo. See, for example, the endless train journey mentioned near the end.
203	* ReallyGetsAround: Colonel Aureliano Buendía, having 17 sons with different women and one with Pilár Ternera; José Arcadio also does this after coming back to Macondo and before settling down with Rebeca.
204	* RedemptionInTheRain: ''The whole town''. Not that it helps, anyway. Macondo enters into decline due to the flooding and never recovers.
205	* RelationshipSabotage: Amaranta does everything she can to sabotage Rebeca and Pietro Crespi's wedding, first convincing everyone to have the wedding in the new church which won't be build in years, and then taking the mothballs from her wedding dress so it will be eaten by moths. When the wedding is about to come anyway, she is at the point of resorting to [[MurderTheHypotenuse killing Rebeca.]]
206	* RiddleForTheAges: No one, including the reader, ever finds out who killed José Arcadio, though he had made many enemies by taking people's land.
207	* RocksFallEveryoneDies: In one fell swoop, [[spoiler: Macondo is eventually destroyed.]]
208	%%* UsefulNotes/{{Romani}}:
209	** Several. Melquíades eventually becomes a permanent fixture in the house after he comes BackFromTheDead. [[spoiler:Then he dies ''again'', but still survives as a sort of interactive memory passed down through José Arcadio's bloodline.]]
210	** It's all but stated that [[spoiler:Mauricio Babilonia]] has Roma blood in his veins.
211	* ScarsAreForever: [[spoiler:Amaranta, who burns her own hand as self-punishment for Pietro Crespi's suicide.]]
212	* ShellShockedVeteran: Colonel Aureliano Buendía. After he comes back (for real) from his various wars he retreats from the world, becoming apathetic to his family and only dedicates himself to making golden fish.
213	* ShoutOut:
214	** To some earlier stories by Márquez, such as ''Big Mama's Funeral''.
215	** Also to Julio Cortázar's ''Rayuela'' by mentioning Rocamadour towards the end of the book.
216	* SiblingTriangle: Petra Cotes regularly sleeps with the twins José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo without realizing they're not the same dude. The three contract a STD, which reveals the whole deal, and she breaks up with them. José Arcadio Segundo leaves Petra after getting better, but Aureliano Segundo gets her forgiveness and keeps her as TheMistress since he cannot marry her.
217	* SiblingYinYang / RedOniBlueOni: Any pair of brothers named José Arcadio and Aureliano. Reversed with the Segundos.
218	* SmallTownTyrant: Arcadio takes over Macondo in the name of the liberals during the wars, and proves a tyrannical ruler, killing those who cross or even annoy him.
219	* SoBeautifulItsACurse: Remedios The Beauty, albeit the curse part is less for her and more for the people ''around'' her.
220	* SolarPoweredMagnifyingGlass: The gypsies put a pile of dry hay in the middle of the street and set it on fire with a gigantic magnifying glass. This makes José Arcadio Buendía think that it can be used as as a weapon of war.
221	* SomeoneToRememberHimBy: [[spoiler:Santa Sofía de la Piedad]] gives birth to twins José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo five months after [[spoiler:Arcadio's execution via firing squad.]]
222	* SpurnedIntoSuicide: Pietro Crespi falls in love with Amaranta, and kills himself after she rejects him.
223	* StarCrossedLovers:
224	** Meme and Mauricio Babilonia.
225	** Later on, Meme's son Aureliano becomes this with [[SurpriseIncest his own aunt.]] [[spoiler: It's their love that results in the birth of a child with the dreaded pig tail, which pretty much dooms the Buendía family]]
226	* StigmaticPregnancyEuphemism: [[spoiler: Fernanda Del Carpio, after separating Meme from Mauricio and finding out Meme is pregnant, sends her to a convent.]]
227	* StrawmanHasAPoint: In-universe example: when conservative Apolinar Moscote explains politics to Aureliano, he makes strawmen out of liberals' positions on many topics. The only topic he's not apathetic about, legal acceptance of illegitimate children, is something in which he agrees with the liberals. What makes Aureliano become a liberal, however, is watching the conservatives commit electoral fraud right afterwards.
228	* TheStoic: Colonel Aureliano Buendía becomes this at some point during the war. Úrsula comes to believe that he was actually like this from the very beginning.
229	* SurpriseIncest: Arcadio tries to sleep with Pilar Ternera, who unbeknownst to him is his biological mother. Pilar, who is aware of this, tries to dissuade him and, unwilling to tell him the truth, sends Santa Sofía de la Piedad in her stead.
230	** The last Aureliano has an affair with Amaranta Úrsula, believing he is adopted so they are not biologically related, without knowing he is actually her biological nephew. He does suspect there might be secret incest going on, except his idea is that they might be half siblings through Aureliano Segundo and Petra Cotes.
231	* TangledFamilyTree: Úrsula and José Arcadio Buendía are themselves cousins, then both of their sons have a kid with the same woman (and the son of the oldest one is raised by his grandparents only, who make him believe they're his parents), the two girls (one of them their daughter, the other a distant cousin) [[HistoryRepeats briefly fight for the same guy]] (and later the oldest son marries that cousin, who's such a distant cousin not even Úrsula and José remember how they're related, the cousin then being taken in after her parents died and raised as a sister to their kids, complicating things further), one of them has seventeen kids with seventeen different women, the eldest son of the youngest brother goes on to fall in love with his aunt, the son of the oldest son of Úrsula and José Arcadio has twins and nobody is really sure which one is which, [[HistoryRepeats both of them briefly sharing the same lover]], who becomes the lifelong mistress to one of them,[[spoiler: the wife of one of the twins hides her daughter's baby and he ends up dating his aunt (the wife's younger daughter) and having a baby with her]], and they keep repeating names between generations.
232	* TarotMotifs: Mentioned occasionally during Pilar Tenera's fortune tellings.
233	* TellHerImNotSpeakingToHer: Amaranta and Fernanda spend years not talking after Amaranta verbally humiliates Fernanda in front of the family due to her pompous attitude. [[spoiler:Not even Amaranta's death changes their minds; when Ursula asks the dying Amaranta to say goodbye, she bitterly says "it's not worth it anymore".]]
234	* TemptingFate: After seeing a kid and his grandpa [[PoliceBrutality get killed by cops with machetes]], Aureliano threatens to arm all his sons and "get rid of these shitty gringos". [[spoiler: Not too much later, almost all of the 17 Aurelianos end up being assassinated.]]
235	* ThemeNaming:
236	** Lampshaded thoroughly, the characters themselves being aware of this. The José Arcadios are outgoing, stout and subject to a cruel, final fate. Aurelianos are more laid back, lonely and inquisitive.
237	** Played with in the third and fourth generations of the Buendía family. While Arcadio and Aureliano José each take after their fathers (José Arcadio and Aureliano, respectively), Arcadio's sons Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo take on the opposite personalities from what their names indicate. See TwinSwitch.
238	* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: After captain Aquiles Ricardo fatally shoots [[spoiler:Aureliano José]], he's shot to death and more than four hundred men unload their guns on his corpse while the latter bleeds out.
239	* ThreadOfProphecySevered: Aureliano Jos´ was destined to marry Carmelita Montreal, have seven children, and die of old age, but instead he ends up getting murdered at a young age due to not listening to Pilar Ternera's advice.
240	* TitleDrop: The title is used for the first time in the very last sentence of the book.
241	* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: [[spoiler:Little Remedios and Remedios the Beauty.]]
242	* {{Tsundere}}: Meme is a Type B. Normally a rebellious and somewhat vain GenkiGirl, she goes all tsuntsun when Mauricio appears.
243	* TwinDesynch: Twins José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo initially look and act the same way, but when they grow up both look very different (due to Aureliano Segundo gaining wait) and have drastically different personalities.
244	* TwinSwitch: José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo, so much that the family traits associated with their names are swapped. [[spoiler:Lampshaded when their coffins are accidentally switched at the last minute.]]
245	* TwinTelepathy: When twins Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo are children, their mother gives one a glass of lemonade and the other, who had not tasted it, correctly says that it needed sugar.
246	* TyrantTakesTheHelm: Arcadio takes over Macondo during the wars and rules harshly, killing many people.
247	* TheVoiceless: Meme becomes this after [[spoiler:losing Mauricio Babilonia]].
248	* VoteEarlyVoteOften: The conservatives rig the first election in Macondo, getting rid of most of the liberal ballots. This inspires Aureliano to fight in wars on behalf of the liberals.
249	* WalkingTheEarth: José Arcadio, although he returns after going around the world sixty-five times. Melquíades and his band of UsefulNotes/{{Roma\|ni}} also do this (they've been just about everywhere, too).
250	* WhatBeautifulEyes:
251	** Aureliano Amador, one of the 17 Aurelianos, had deep green eyes contrasting with his dark skin.
252	** Mauricio Babilonia. Fernanda was surprised when he saw him for the first and only time and looked into his deep brown eyes...and then she kicked him out of the Buendía house.
253	** Little Remedios was also noted as having beautiful green eyes.
254	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: All the major characters (members of the Buendía family, {{Love Interest}}s, friends) get ''some'' ending to their stories, whether it is death or [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leaving Macondo not to be heard from again]]. The sole exception is Petra Cotes. The last we hear of her is that she survived Fernanda.
255	* WifeHusbandry: Little Remedios and Aureliano, who's old enough to be her father. Well, she ''was'' [[WiseBeyondTheirYears smarter and more mature than the average girl]], but still, he proposes marriage when she's just ''nine''...
256	-->'''Pilar Ternera:''' You'll have to raise her first.
257	* WiseBeyondTheirYears:
258	** As mentioned, Little Remedios matured ''very'' quickly after marrying Aureliano, becoming [[ProperLady a competent and cheerful homemaker]] loved by everyone. [[spoiler:Hence, why her early death hit everyone so hard.]]
259	** Aureliano Babilonia is constantly reading books in Melquíades' office and giving lectures to people about the injustices of history when he is a young child, impressing everyone.
260	* WorldsMostBeautifulWoman: Remedios the Beauty.
261	* WrongGenreSavvy: Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula were both raised to believe that Aureliano Babilonia was adopted, therefore thinking that [[spoiler:being each other's {{Victorious Childhood Friend}}s, screwing each other and having a child]] would have no harmful consequences. They were proven wrong, with tragic consequences.
262	* YouCantFightFate: The family's history was written from the beginning to the end by Melquíades, thus they were damned from the start. However, his manuscripts were written in a hard to decipher way, only being read in full by [[spoiler: Aureliano Babilonia.]] The book could have been named You Can't Fight Fate: The Book.

Context Literature / OneHundredYearsOfSolitude